The Lonely Struggle

Sanji Yaguchi, one of the post-humans loose in Japan, kills a man on a public street, and Aramaki alerts the team that the act was captured on camera by a passing journalist. The victim, Koichi Tadakoro, held the post of Security-General at the Ministry of Residential Control, and Aramaki orders the unit to search for other killings that fit the same pattern.

A visit to one of Sanji's old trainers reveals that he is suffering the overheating that afflicts developing post-humans before they fully transform. Purin, after breaking into police records, produces ninety-two autopsies that match the method, most sharing a single killer with near certainty. The dead were largely immigrants and refugees who had obtained Japanese citizenship illegally.

The trail leads back to Ishiwata, Sanji's first victim, who exploited those same immigrants as cheap labor on the Tokyo Reconstruction project while they drew welfare under false identities. Aramaki and the Major carry the warning to Prime Minister Tate, pointing out that his father-in-law, the congressman Sachio Otomo, runs a construction firm tied to the project and could be next. Tate is stung to learn the old man tried to bribe Tadakoro, but insists on confronting him personally first.

Despite a Tachikoma set to guard him, Sachio is killed that night. Tate blames Section 9, and the shadowy John demands a fabricated cover story to keep the post-human secret buried. Tate instead asks for a false report of a death by illness, paired with genuine news engineered to draw Sanji out.

The bait works. As Tate steps in to assume his father-in-law's company role, Sanji confronts him and demands his purpose, and Tate answers that he means to restore the nation's former glory. The Major closes in, beats Sanji into submission, and clamps a cyber lock on him, after which John spirits the unconscious post-human away. This is the ninth episode of Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, subtitled IDENTITY THEFT, between What Came About as a Result of Togusa's Death and Reasons Leading to Flameout.